


Unfinished Business

by magisterpavus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Cuddling & Snuggling, Ghost Keith (Voltron), Guilt, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Poltergeists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 08:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterpavus/pseuds/magisterpavus
Summary: There's a man in Keith's house, and unfortunately he doesn't seem to mind having a grumpy poltergeist as a roommate.





	Unfinished Business

**Author's Note:**

> this was from a super fun prompt by the lovely Kricket! It was kinda supposed to be fluffy, then while writing it I realized "OH NO THIS MEANS HE'S LIKE.....DEAD...." and angst happened. but it's still pretty fluffy. 
> 
> anyway, hope y'all enjoy - HAPPY SPOOKY SEASON DAY 1. as always, if you wanna follow me & my stuff, hmu on twitter [@saltyshiro](https://twitter.com/saltyshiro)

9875 East Lionel Road is a fairly unremarkable little house, except for its dark history and dirt cheap rent. When Takashi Shirogane takes his first few steps across its threshold, he only knows about the latter of these. This was the only house he could afford, and it beats being crammed into a two-bedroom with several other grad students. The house is small and rickety, but it’s still a house, and Shiro will gladly take it.

It’s strange, though. As soon as the door shuts behind him, the smell of smoke drifts through the air, and the back of Shiro’s neck prickles, as if someone is standing behind him. But of course, when he turns, no one is there. Nothing is burning.

Or so he thinks, at first.

*

There’s a man in Keith’s house. 

He’s a stranger, with strange dyed hair and a strange metal arm and a strange scar across his nose, not to mention too much luggage for Keith’s liking. This man isn’t like the people who sometimes come by to check up on the place, or even the nervous woman who dared to start moving furniture in large boxes labeled with names in a language that might be Swedish and hanging up cheap picture frames filled with placid oceans and boring sunsets. This man…he plans to _ stay.  _

Keith won’t let him.

He follows the man as he wanders through the house, through  _ his _ house, up the stairs and down the hall until he reaches the master bedroom, where he deposits his bags. Keith narrows his eyes at the offending suitcases, and as the man turns to go retrieve the rest of them, Keith gets to work.

The man returns to clothing strewn all across the room, every suitcase opened, every zipper broken. He stands there in the doorway, color draining from his face and mouth hanging open. Keith watches smugly, folds his arms, and waits.

But the man does not leave. After a long silence, he laughs, a shaky, awkward sound, and shakes his head. “Guess that explains the rent,” he sighs, and starts picking up his clothes.

Keith leaves in a disbelieving huff. He’s going to have to up the ante. 

Over the next few weeks, he does exactly that. He makes all the circuits fry, all the lightbulbs blow out just when the stranger needs them most. He makes the house freezing cold in places and boiling hot in others. He throws the stranger’s toothbrush in the toilet, snaps his razor in half, melts his deodorant, and makes him slip on soap – but stops that after the stranger hits his head on the edge of the sink and actually gets knocked out for a few seconds. 

(Those are a terrifying few seconds, and Keith would never admit it, but he hovers over the man anxiously until his eyes flutter open and he sits up with an unhappy groan, at which point Keith darts away.)

Keith doesn’t want to cause any lasting damage. Just make the place uninhabitable.

The problem is, causing so much chaos drains Keith’s energy an alarming amount. When he’s tired, he can’t do anything. He can barely even feel himself...it’s a frightening feeling, to fade. When Keith needs to recharge, all he can do is watch the stranger go about his life. During these times, Keith learns more about the stranger than he ever wanted to. 

For a start, his name is Shiro, judging by the name he uses when he talks to himself sometimes – a normal amount, though. Keith talks to himself, too. Doesn’t mean he’s crazy. Nope. Just...a little lonely. Maybe. It’s nice to hear someone else’s voice, though Keith wishes the voice’s owner wasn’t also invading his space.

Takashi Shirogane is his full name, if the complicated paperwork on his desk (which Keith knocks off and scatters across the floor repeatedly) is anything to go by. He’s a student at Altea University, a place Keith only vaguely recalls. It was for wealthy people, buildings made of old red brick covered in English ivy. 

But Shiro isn’t wealthy. Not if he’s renting this place and hasn’t left yet. Keith begins to realize this more and more as he witnesses the man’s truly tragic diet – lots of ramen, lots of peanut-butter sandwiches, lots of rice made in the ancient rice cooker which always scares Keith when it dings, and lots of eggs. Shiro’s at least good at cooking eggs. But Keith wants to shove a damn vegetable into his mouth, sometimes. Having Shiro here is bad enough, it would be even worse if he got scurvy.

Unfortunately, Keith doesn’t think scurvy would dim Shiro’s good looks much. Really, it  _ would _ be Keith’s luck that the first tenant here in decades is easily the most handsome man he’s ever witnessed. Not that Keith can remember much of his life – for all he knows, maybe there were dozens of handsomer men he saw on the street every day. 

But he doubts it. Keith and his father kept to themselves – that much, he knows. They were loners, a bit odd, a bit off, the neighbors thought. That’s why no one called the firefighters.

Shiro always goes to the gym in the early morning (unless he pulled an all-nighter), and it shows. The first time he takes off his shirt on a particularly humid afternoon which Keith makes hotter, Keith darts behind a lamp and peeks out around the lampshade. He can’t blush, as far as he knows, but if he could he would. Shiro’s all hard lines and rippling muscle, skin tanned and warm in the afternoon sunshine. When he stretches, Keith drifts through the wall in a tizzy.

It’s strange, though – while Shiro’s left arm is corded tendons and bulging muscle, his right arm ends just below the shoulder, threaded with silver-white scar tissue where the metal arm meets his flesh. He takes that arm off at night. Keith is struck with the urge to knock it off the nightstand, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It seems like it would be adding insult to injury, and Keith doesn’t want to be cruel. He just wants Shiro to leave. He wants his house back.

Shiro talks to him sometimes. After Keith turns on the kitchen sink while Shiro is making eggs one day to freak him out, Shiro jumps, then smiles crookedly at the sink where Keith is crouched over it and says, “Good morning to you, too.”

Keith is so startled he turns the sink off abruptly and hides in the hall closet until Shiro leaves for class.

A few times, Shiro asks him his name. Asks him if he’s a friendly ghost. Says he thinks he is. Keith tries to scare him by knocking all of the knives out of the knife block and hurling one – albeit the smallest one – into the wall, but Shiro just looks slightly sweatier, frowns, and says, “I know you don’t want me here. But I don’t have anywhere else to go. Isn’t there something we can do to, I don’t know, make peace? Just think of me as a roommate, maybe.”

Shiro’s not a roommate. He’s trespassing. He makes Keith feel too many things and it makes him afraid. When he was alone, it was easy to drift into the numbness of incorporeality. But now he sometimes finds himself forgetting what he is. Forgetting what happened. Copying Shiro’s movements, his humanity, his life. It makes Keith angry. He isn’t alive. And Shiro doesn’t belong here.

One morning, Shiro takes something out of a cabinet. It’s a box Keith hasn’t noticed before, a little dusty with a small label on it. Keith doesn’t bother reading the label. The contents are much more interesting, as is the way Shiro handles them. He’s never been so careful as he is then, lifting out a ceramic teapot and placing it gently on the table. It’s black, the lines of it simple but elegant. There’s some pattern etched into it, esoteric and foreign, and the pattern is echoed in each of the tea cups that follow. 

Shiro takes a moment standing beside the tea set, smiling softly, rubbing his thumb over the label before turning to the tea cabinet beside the sink and rifling through it.

Keith knows he shouldn’t do it. But he doesn’t think anything in that moment except: _ I’ve finally found something that will make him leave for good. _

Keith throws the tea set off the table, shattering it across the tile floor.

For a painful second, there is silence as Shiro turns, staring at the remains of the tea set. The tea pot lays broken in several large shards, and the cups are all cracked and chipped. His lower lip starts to tremble and all the anger drains out of Keith as he realizes what he’s done, as he sees the label on the tea set. It reads:  _ For my son, Takashi Shirogane.  _

Keith shrinks back against the wall as Shiro takes a halting step forward. His eyes shine, but no tears fall. He doesn’t make any quips, doesn’t yell. He’s quiet as he kneels and picks up the shattered pieces as carefully as he held them when they were whole. When Shiro has placed all the pieces back in their box, he braces himself on the table, head bowed, hands curling slowly into fists. Then he puts the box back into the cabinet, puts his phone, keys, and wallet into his pockets, and leaves.

Keith waits at the top of the stairs, curled up on the landing. He made a mistake. He didn’t want to hurt Shiro, but he did – he has. What would his father say? He misses his father. Why did he leave? Why did he leave Keith here, alone?

Maybe Keith doesn’t want to be alone here after all. Maybe he just wants to be –  _ something,  _ again. Not this drifting, bitter  _ thing  _ with no purpose, a hazy sense of the present, a fragmented past, and an empty future. He was so angry when he broke the tea set. Keith doesn’t want to be angry. But now Shiro is angry with him.

As the hours slide by, Keith’s worry multiplies. What if something happened to Shiro? He’s never out this late, unless he goes out with friends, and Keith doesn’t think that’s where he went. Maybe...maybe he’s finding a priest. 

Keith curls tighter in on himself. He doesn’t know what that means, exactly, but the woman who came here with the furniture and paintings joked about getting one to exorcise the place. Keith doesn’t like that word. He doesn’t want to be exorcised...unless it sends him back to his father, and even then, where would that be? Is it a bad place? Would he ever see Shiro again?

When the door does open, Keith hides, but peeks out from behind the oven to see who’s there. It’s Shiro, and relief floods him as wholly as the anger did. Shiro is holding a box, and he sets it heavily on the table. 

“Hey, ghost,” he says. His voice is dull and weary. Keith lifts his head a little higher. “Or, or poltergeist, or demon, whatever the hell you are. I have something for you.” Keith slowly slips out from behind the oven. Shiro opens the box. Keith blinks. It’s another tea set, also black, but this one is made of plastic. “If you feel like breaking things,” Shiro mutters, “please just use this one. Okay? That tea set...it means a lot to me. It was my mom’s. Before she…” He shakes his head and pushes the tea box across the table. “Nevermind. This was stupid. You really want me to go, huh?”

Keith doesn’t want Shiro to go, but it’s only then that he realizes it. Shiro turns away, shoulders slumped, and Keith does something he didn’t know he could. He reaches out and touches Shiro’s back.

Shiro jumps and whirls around. Keith stumbles back, staring at him. Shiro is staring, too, though his eyes keep darting around in confusion and mild terror, straining to see an outline, a silhouette of a boy who might be there, or might not. Keith wets his lips, opens his mouth, and says in a voice creaky with disuse, “I’m sorry, Shiro.”

Shiro almost falls on his ass. _ “Oh my god,” _ he gasps. “Holy  _ shit.  _ What. I – did you just –” He then notices he can see his breath and claps a hand over his mouth, eyes huge. 

“I’m sorry,” Keith repeats, and can already feel himself fading from using so much energy to speak so Shiro can hear. He uses the rest of it to say, “Don’t leave.” 

Shiro’s hand slowly falls from his mouth. “You...don’t want me to go?” His brow furrows, waiting for a response, but Keith can only watch, miserable and silent, a useless shadow. “Okay…” Shiro exhales. “What’s your...name? Do you have a name?” 

Keith drifts a little closer.  _ Keith, _ he whispers, knowing Shiro can’t hear him.  _ My name is Keith. _

Shiro shivers, and shakes his head before heading up the stairs. “Weird,” he says to himself. He keeps his lamp on that night while he sleeps, and Keith doesn’t do a thing to the lightbulb. He sits beside Shiro’s bed, leaning against the wall, guarding the metal arm and its owner – just in case there really is a demon in the house – until his alarm goes off in the morning.

When Shiro is making tea in the plastic tea set, Keith sidles up next to him and says, “My name is Keith.”

Shiro sloshes boiling water over his hand. It’s a good thing it’s metal. He turns to where Keith is standing, and a not unpleasant tingle goes through Keith when Shiro looks at him like that, eyes wide not with fear but with wonder. “Keith,” he repeats. “Well, that doesn’t sound like a demon. I’m Shiro...but you probably knew that.”

“Yes,” Keith says. He shifts closer to Shiro. Keith feels a little stronger when he’s near him. “I’m not a demon…”

Shiro waits, eyebrow lifted, for an explanation.

Keith shuffles even closer, until goosebumps break out over Shiro’s skin and Keith could lean his head on Shiro’s shoulder. He doesn’t, but he thinks he wants to. “There was a fire,” he says, halting. It’s all he can say. 

“A fire,” Shiro repeats, thoughtful. “Huh. Here?”

Keith is rendered quiet again. In his voiceless voice, he replies, _ Yes. Here. The entire house went up in flames. My father tried to get me out. It didn’t work. We both died here. I don’t know where the bodies went. I don’t know if there are bodies. I don’t remember dying. Just the heat, the light, the pain. My father shouting. Then I woke up, and there was a house again, and I was here. Alone. Until you. _

Shiro, of course, hears none of it. But later that day, he does start typing some questionable things into the device Keith has learned is called a “laptop.” Keith peers over his shoulder as he scrolls through what look to be old news articles. 

“Kogane house fire,” Shiro reads. “Father and son perish in nightmarish blaze...Mr. Kogane, 46, died with his son, Keith Kogane, at approximately 1:13 AM on the night of October 23, 1973, the night of Keith Kogane’s 20th birthday. The investigation is ongoing but there is no evidence of foul play. However, neighbors claim the Kogane boy was…” Shiro trails off, leaning back in his chair. “Was reclusive, strange, and prone to instigating violent fights in school...”

Keith flinches away, the temperature in the room plummeting in his panic. No –  _ no. _ He hadn’t set the fire. He would have remembered it. He wouldn’t have done that! He wouldn’t have hurt his father – 

Keith falters. Shiro is turned around in his chair, facing him, looking at him...actually  _ looking.  _ His lips part. “Keith,” he breathes. “I...I can  _ see  _ you.”

Keith makes for the door, but Shiro stands, hands lifted in surrender. “Don’t go,” he says. “Please – don’t go?”

Keith doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what Shiro sees – a burned and ghoulish monster, or a frightened young man wearing the red T-shirt and flannel pajama pants he died in? He can feel himself flickering, in and out, torn between fleeing and remaining as Shiro approaches with tentative curiosity. The truth is, there’s nowhere for him to go. He’s trapped here. With Shiro. 

The prospect is no longer unpleasant to him, though...especially not when Shiro is reaching out and touching his hand. Tries to, anyway. His fingertips drift through, but Keith still feels the touch, like a warm echo, a spark. He jolts and blinks up at Shiro. Shiro smiles, small and secretive. “Wow,” he says. “Either I’m losing it, or there’s a cute ghost in my room.”

Keith flails and backs away.  _ Cute?  _ He is not –  _ what? _

Shiro’s smile falls. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Bad timing, huh?”

“The fire – wasn’t me,” Keith whispers, wringing his hands, flickering madly.

Shiro just nods. “I didn’t think it was you,” he says. “You don’t seem the, uh...type.” He glances around. “Um, is your dad also…?”

Keith shakes his head. He’s fading again, and Shiro notices, his brow furrowing. “Gone,” Keith whispers. “I’m sorry, I can’t –” Then he’s gone, too, silent again. He could scream in frustration, but Shiro won’t hear him, so it doesn’t matter. The room grows cold with his unhappiness.

But Shiro smiles again and says, “It’s okay. I know you’re still there, I think I can...sense it? Or something. It feels like...static electricity, you know? But, um. Nicer.” Keith looks at him blankly, but the urge to scream fades, and the temperature in the room returns to normal. “It’s late, anyway...and I’m sure you don’t want me reading this depressing stuff. Would it be okay if I told you a story?” Shiro sits down on the edge of his bed. “Poke me if yes, if you can.”

Hesitantly, Keith sits next to him on the bed and presses his fingertip, or where his fingertip should be, to Shiro’s left arm.

Shiro beams and lays down. Keith lays down next to him, even if it’s more like floating just above the blankets. “Cool,” Shiro says. “I’ll tell you the story of that tea set.”

Keith sits up, churning with guilt. Maybe Shiro really can sense him, because he adds, “Don’t worry about the tea set. You didn’t know what it was, and it can be fixed. I’m not mad at you, Keith. I think my Mom would have laughed if I told her a ghost broke her tea set. She would have called you a  _ yūrei. _ It’s a pretty word, isn’t it? Prettier than _ ghost.” _

_ What is a yūrei?  _ Keith asks, and slowly, so slowly, reaches out to wrap an arm around Shiro’s waist. He doesn’t think Shiro can feel it – maybe only as a draft, a whisper of air – but Keith can feel it, can feel  _ him. _ It’s anchoring. It’s warm, not like the fire that destroyed him, but something softer, something that he swears is restoring him bit by bit.

Shiro doesn’t hear him, but he answers anyway. “I asked her once if all  _ yūrei  _ were bad, and she said no. She said they’re mostly just...lost. Sad, sometimes. Lonely. They’re tied to this world because they haven’t been laid to rest properly, or they have unfinished business. Is that true? Do you have unfinished business? Some revenge, or an unpaid debt?”

Keith curls closer against his side. He wonders if unfinished business can be a person, someone he was meant to wait here for. He thinks he’s okay with waiting a while longer. 

He closes his eyes and listens to Shiro’s heartbeat, to the rise and fall of his voice. It’s comforting. After a while, the sound shifts into something new, something long-forgotten, into the sound of a distant autumn wind, rustling through the trees. Keith is sitting at a windowsill, looking at his father’s red truck as it pulls into the driveway. He presses his palm to the glass, and it’s cool as ice to the touch. 

Tomorrow morning, he and his father will drive to Keith’s favorite diner and eat greasy birthday breakfast together. They will play the worst songs on the jukebox as loud as they can. Keith’s dad will tease him about the waitress with the pretty brown eyes, and Keith will pretend he isn’t looking at the fry cook with a tattoo from Vietnam instead, and Keith’s dad will pretend he doesn’t notice, but will slip Keith an extra fry. 

The wind blows harder and Keith sets down his cigarette on the windowsill, resting his chin in his palm as the smoke curls upwards. It’s going to be a good birthday. He can feel it.


End file.
